The present invention relates to a capsule for controllably metering products held in bottles or the like.
In the cosmetic field, as well as in other fields in which products must be delivered in metered amounts on a delivery surface, metering capsules including in their inside delivery ball elements are already known.
These metering capsule conventionally comprise a rod element, arranged in the bottle neck, and a ball element in turn engaged in a mating seat having a substantially circular rim, and provided on said rod element.
This rod-ball element assembly is protected by a capsule or cap threaded on the threaded neck of the bottle.
In particular, the ball element partially projects from the bottle neck and is free of rotating in its engagement seat, as said ball element contacts the product application or delivery surface, thereby gradually delivering said product.
While the above mentioned prior metering capsule allows to controllably deliver or meter the product, it, on the other hand, has a rather complex construction, since for making it three different component elements are required.
In this connection it should be pointed out that constructional complexity of prior metering capsules negatively affects the operations required for preparing or packaging the bottle, which operations would comprise the filling-in of the bottle with the product, the insertion of the rod element and ball element assembly inside the bottle neck, and the final threading of the capsule or cap on the bottle.
A further problem of prior metering capsules is that, in order to apply said capsules to small size bottles, it is necessary to form special threads, which are different from the corresponding like-size standardized threads, since the inner diameter of the neck of small bottles is not sufficient to receive therein a ball elementxe2x80x94rod element assembly.
From the above it should be apparent that it would be actually desirable to provide a metering capsule for controllably metering products held in bottles or the like, allowing to overcome the above mentioned problems. The document GB-A-2 195 246 discloses a capsule substantially according to the preamble of claim 1.
Accordingly, the aim of the present invention is to provide such a capsule or cap, including a metering ball element for controllably metering a product, which capsule includes a minimum number of component pieces and can be threaded to bottles or containers having a neck provided with a standard thread thereby allowing to greatly reduce the making and packaging cost of the bottle the capsule is applied to.
Said aim is achieved by the present invention which specifically relates to a capsule for controllably metering products held in bottles or the like, comprising a ball element designed for controllably distributing a product on an application surface therefor, and having the characterizing features of the characterizing portion of claim 1.
According to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the bottle neck engagement means comprise a threaded portion engaging with a corresponding threaded portion provided on said neck of said bottle the threaded portions of the engagement means and of the bottle neck having standardized threads.
The capsule or cap for controllably metering products held in bottles according to the present invention provides, with respect to the prior art, the following advantages.
Firstly, the capsule or cap according to the present invention is so made to form an integral body, including in its inside said metering ball element, and which can be applied to the bottle without using any rod elements, thereby allowing to reduce the number of component pieces required for making the metering bottle.
Secondly, by using the capsule according to the present invention, the packaging operation for providing a finished product are greatly simplified since, for providing said finished product, it would be merely sufficient to fill-in the bottle with the product and then thread the capsule on the neck of the bottle.
Finally, the specifically designed configuration of the metering capsule according to the present invention will allow to use bottles having standard threads, thereby greatly reducing the making cost thereof.